Within the work of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), orgastic potency is a human's natural ability to experience an orgasm with certain psychosomatic characteristics and resulting in full sexual gratification. For Reich, "orgastic impotence" is an acquired fear of sexual excitation, resulting in the inability to find full sexual gratification (not to be confused with anorgasmia, the inability to reach orgasm). This always resulted in neurosis, according to Reich, because that person could never discharge all built-up libido, which Reich regarded as actual biological or bioelectric energy. According to Reich, "not a single neurotic individual possesses orgastic potency" and, inversely, all people free from neuroses have orgastic potency. Reich coined the term orgastic potency in 1924 and described the concept in his 1927 book Die Funktion des Orgasmus, the manuscript of which he presented to Sigmund Freud on the latter's 70th birthday. Though Reich regarded his work as complementing Freud's original theory of anxiety neurosis, Freud was ambivalent in his reception. Freud's view was that there was no single cause of neurosis. Reich continued to use the concept as a foundation of a person's psychosexual health in his later therapeutic methods, such as character analysis and vegetotherapy. During the period 1933–1937, he attempted to ground his orgasm theory in physiology, both theoretically and experimentally, as he published in the articles: The Orgasm as an Electrophysiological Discharge (1934), Sexuality and Anxiety: The Basic Antithesis of Vegetative Life (1934) and The Bioelectrical Function of Sexuality and Anxiety (1937).
Background
Reich developed his orgasm theory between 1921 and 1924 and it formed the basis for much of his later work, including the theory of character analysis. The starting point of Reich's orgasm theory was his clinical observation of genital disturbance in all neurotics, which he presented in November 1923, in the paper "Über Genitalität vom Standpunkt der psychoanalytischen Prognose und Therapie" ("Genitality from the viewpoint of psycho-analytic prognosis and therapy"). That presentation was met with a chilling silence, much hostility, and was partially discredited because Reich could not adequately define normal sexual health. In response, and after a further year of research, Reich introduced the concept "orgastic potency" at the 1924 Psycho-analytic Congress, Salzburg in the paper "Die therapeutische Bedeutung des Genitallibidos" ("Further Remarks on the Therapeutic Significance of Genital Libido"). In addition to his own patients' love lives, Reich had examined through interviews and case records of 200 patients seen at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Polyclinic. Reich was impressed by the depth and frequency of genital disturbances he observed. One example was a patient who had reported having a normal sex life, but on closer interviewing by Reich revealed not experiencing orgasm during intercourse and having thoughts of murdering her partner following the act. Such observations made Reich very suspicious of superficial reports about sexual experience. His analysis of these cases led Reich to three conclusions:
Severe genital disturbance was present in all cases of neurosis, The severity of the genital disturbance correlated to the severity of the neurosis, and All patients who improved in therapy and remained symptom-free achieved a gratifying genital sex life. This led Reich to establish criteria for satisfactory sexual intercourse. Based on interviews with people who appeared to have satisfactory sex lives, he described the sex act as being optimally satisfactory only if it follows a specific pattern. Orgastic potency is Reich's term for the ability to have this maximally fulfilling type of sexual experience, which in the Reichian view is limited to those who are free from neuroses and appears to be shared by all people free of neuroses. Reich distinguished between complete release of accumulated sexual tensions in orgasm, resulting in the restoration of energy equilibrium, and orgastic impotence, in which the release of energy is incomplete. Reich argued that the inability of psychoneurotics to wholly discharge sexual energy caused a damming-up of sexual energy, providing in real-time the physiological 'energy stasis' underlying the neurosis, with the psyche merely providing the historical content of the neurosis, but which could not exist without the accompanying energy stasis.
Definitions Reich's precise definition for the phrase "orgastic potency" changed over time as he changed his understanding of the phenomenon. He first described it in detail in his 1927 book Die Funktion Des Orgasmus. In the 1980 English translation of the book, Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neuroses, he defined orgastic potency as "the ability to achieve full resolution of existing sexual need-tension". In his 1940 book Die Entdeckung des Orgons Erster Teil: Die Function des Orgasmus, published in English in 1942 as The Discovery of the Orgone, Volume 1: The Function of the Orgasm, he defined it as "the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy, free of any inhibitions; the capacity to discharge completely the dammed-up sexual excitation through involuntary, pleasurable convulsions of the body." His last published definition of orgastic potency, which is repeated in his 1960 published Selected Writings, is "the capacity for complete surrender to the involuntary convulsion of the organism and complete discharge of the excitation at the acme of the genital embrace." Reich related orgastic potency and orgastic impotence to a, respectively, healthy and unhealthy sexual experience for the adult. He described that the healthy experience has specific biological and psychological characteristics; is identical for men and women; is characterised by love and the ability to express it; full, deep, pleasurable breathing is present; deep, delicious current-like sensations run up and down the body shortly before orgasm; and involuntary muscular movements are present before climax. Moreover, Reich defined the healthy sexual experience exclusively in terms of the sexual union between male and female. The difference between the presence and absence of orgastic potency in the sexual encounter, as described by Reich, is summarised by Boadella as follows:
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